Chapter VI: Part 6

Amy tried in vain to remove Carolyn from the board. But Carolyn, like Hortense, had finally joined the ranks of the "recognized"; she was determined (being still ignorant, Cope was glad to see, regarding Amy's claims) to make this recognition so marked as to last beyond the moment. She played a little--not well. She read. She even accompanied Amy to the door at the close of Cope's short stay. He shook hands with them both. He had decided that he would do no more than this with Amy, in any event, and Carolyn's presence made his predetermined course easy, even obligatory. Yet he went out into the night feeling, somehow, that he had acted solely on his resolution and that he might consider himself a man of some decisiveness, after all. Amy had looked disappointed, but had contrived to whisper that she would write from Iowa. That, of course, was to be looked for, and would represent the combined efforts of herself and her home circle; yet he had a fortnight for consideration and counsel.

Cope, during his first few days at home, was moody and abstracted: his parents found him adding little to the Christmas cheer. His mother, always busy over domestic cares and now busier than ever, thought that he must have been working too hard. She would stand in the kitchen door with a half-trimmed pie on one hand and ponder him as he sat in the dining-room, staring absorbedly at the Franklin stove. His father, who saw him chiefly in the evening, by the gas-light of the old-fashioned house, found his face slightly pinched: was his pocket pinched too, and would he be likely, before leaving, to ask help toward making up a deficit? His sister Rosalys, who lived a life of dry routine, figured him as deep in love. He let several days pass without hinting what the real situation was.

There was interest all round when, the day before Christmas, the postman came along the bleak and flimsy street and left a letter for him. Cope was away from the house, and Rosalys, studying the envelope's penmanship and even its postmark, found vague confirmation of her theory: some college girl--one of his own students, probably--was home on vacation just as he was. If so, a "small town" person of caste and character like themselves; not brilliant, but safe. She set up the letter edgewise on the back parlor mantelpiece.

When Cope came in at noon and saw the letter, his face fell. He put it in his pocket, sat silent at table, and disappeared as soon as the meal was over. Rosalys, whose pupils were off her mind for a few days and who had thought to spare, began to shade her theory.

Cope read the letter in the low-ceiled back bedroom (the ceiling sloped away on one side) which had been his for so many years. Those years of happy boyhood--how far away they seemed now, and how completely past! Surely he had never thought to come back to these familiar walls to such effect as this.... Well, what did it say?

It said, in its four pages (yes, Amy had really limited herself thus), how joyous she was that the dear Christmas season had brought her such a beautiful love-gift; it said that mother was so pleased and happy--and even mentioned a sudden aunt; it said how willingly she would wait on until....

That evening Cope made his announcement. They were all seated round the reading-lamp in the back parlor, where the old Brussels carpet looked dim and where only venerated age kept the ornate French clock from seeming tawdry. Cope looked down at the carpet and up at the clock, and spoke.

Yes, they must have it.

His mother took the shock first and absorbed most of it. She led a humdrum life and she was ready to welcome romance. To help adjust herself she laid her hands, with a soft, sweeping motion, on the two brown waves that drew smoothly across her temples, and then she transferred them to his, held his head, and gave him a kiss. Rosalys took his two hands warmly and smiled, and he tried to smile back. His father twisted the tip of his short gray beard, watched his son's mien, and said little. Day after to-morrow, with the major part of their small Christmas festivities over, he would ask how this unexpected and unwarranted situation had come about, and how, in heaven's name, the thing was to be carried through: by what means, with whose help?... In his complex of thought the word "thesis" came to his tongue, but he kept from speaking it. He had been advised that his son had at last struck out definitely into some bookish bypath--just what bypath mattered little, he gathered, if it were but followed to the end. Yet the end was still far--and the boy evidently realized this. He was glad that Bertram was sober over the prospect and over his present plan--which was a serious undertaking, just now, in truth.

Cope had to adjust himself to all this, and to endure, besides, the congratulations--or the comments--of a number of tiresome relatives; and it was a relief when, on the twenty-ninth, Arthur Lemoyne finally arrived.

Lemoyne had been heralded as a young man of parts, and as the son of a family which enjoyed, in Winnebago, some significant share of worldly prosperity, and, therefore, of social consideration. The simpler Copes, putting him in the other back bedroom, the ceiling of which sloped the opposite way, wondered if they were quite giving him his just dues. When Rosalys came to set away his handbag and to rearrange, next morning, his brushes on the top of the dresser, she gathered from various indications supplied by his outfit that the front chamber, at whatever inconvenience to whomever, would have been more suitable. But, "Never mind," said her mother; "they'll do very well as they are--side by side, with the door conveniently between. Then Bert can look after him a little more and we a little less."

Lemoyne presented himself to the combined family gaze as a young man of twenty-seven or so, with dark, limpid eyes, a good deal of dark, wavy hair, and limbs almost too plumply well-turned. In his hands the flesh minimized the prominence of joints and knuckles, and the fingers (especially the little fingers) displayed certain graceful, slightly affected movements of the kind which may cause a person to be credited--or taxed--with possessing the "artistic temperament." To end with, he carried two inches of short black stubble under his nose. He was a type which one may admire--or not. Rosalys Cope found in him a sort of picturesque allure. Rather liking him herself, she found a different reason for her brother's liking. "If Bert cares for him," she remarked, "I suppose it's largely by contrast--he's so spare and light-colored himself."

It was evident that, on this first meeting, Lemoyne meant to ingratiate himself--to make himself attractive and entertaining. He had determined to say a thing or two before he went away, and it would be advantageous to consolidate his position.

He had had five or six hours of cross-country travel, with some tedious waits at junctions, and at about ten o'clock, after some showy converse, he acknowledged himself tired enough for bed. Cope saw him up, and did not come down again. The two talked till past eleven; and even much later, when light sleepers in other parts of the house were awake for a few minutes, muffled sounds from the same two voices reached their ears.

But Cope's words, many as they were, told Lemoyne nothing that he did not know, little that he had not divined. The sum of all was this: Cope did not quite know how he had got into it; but he knew that he was miserable and wanted to get out of it.

Lemoyne had asked, first of all, to see the letter from Iowa. "Oh, come," Cope had replied, half-bashful, half-chivalrous, "you know it wasn't written for anybody but me."

"The substance of it, then," Lemoyne had demanded; and Cope, reluctant and shame-faced, had given it. "You've never been in anything of this sort, you know," he submitted.

"I should say not!" Lemoyne retorted. "Nor you, either. You're not in it now,--or, if you are, you're soon going to be out of it. You would help me through a thing like this, and I'm going to help you."

The talk went on. Lemoyne presented the case for a broken engagement. Engagements, as it was well known to human experience, might, if quickly made, be as quickly unmade: no novelty in that. "I had never expected to double up with an engaged man," Lemoyne declared further. "Nothing especially jolly about that--least of all when the poor wretch is held dead against his will." As he went on, he made Cope feel that he had violated an _entente_ of long standing, and had almost brought a trusting friend down from home under false pretenses.

But phrases from Amy's letter continued to plague Cope. There was a confiding trust, a tender who-could-say-just-what?...

"Well," said Lemoyne, at about two o'clock, "let's put it off till morning. Turn over and go to sleep."

But before he fell asleep himself he resolved that he would make the true situation clear next day. He would address that sympathetic mother and that romantic sister in suitably cogent terms; the father, he felt sure, would require no effort and would even welcome his aid with a strong sense of relief.

So next day, Lemoyne, deploying his natural graces and his dramatic dexterities, drew away the curtain. He did not go so far as to say that Bertram had been tricked; he did not even go so far as to say that he had been inexpert: he contented himself with saying that his friend had been over-chivalrous and that his fine nature had rather been played upon. The mother took it all with a silent, inexpressive thoughtfulness, though it was felt that she did not want her boy to be unhappy. Rosalys, if she admired Lemoyne a little more, now liked him rather less. Her father, when the declaration reached him by secondary impact, did feel the sense of relief which Lemoyne had anticipated, and came to look upon him as an able, if somewhat fantastic, young fellow.

Cope himself, when his father questioned him, said with frank disconsolateness, "I'm miserable!" And, "I wish to heaven I were out of it!" he added.

"_Get_ out of it," his father counselled; and when Cope's own feelings were clearly known through the household there was no voice of dissent. "And then buckle down for your degree," the elder added, to finish.

"If I only could!" exclaimed Cope, with a wan face,--convinced, youthfully, that the trouble through which he was now striving must last indefinitely. "I should be glad enough to get my mind on it, I'm sure."

He walked away to reconstruct a devastated privacy. "Arthur, I'm not quite sure that I thank you," he said, later.

"H'm!" replied Lemoyne non-committally. "I hope," he added, more definitely articulate, "that we're going to have a pleasanter life in our new quarters. I'm getting mighty little pleasure--if you'll just understand me--here!"

21

_COPE, SAFEGUARDED, CALLS AGAIN_

If Cope came back from Freeford with the moral support of one family, Amy Leffingwell came back from Fort Lodge with the moral support of another. Hers was a fragmental family, true; but its sentiment was unanimous; she had the combined support of a pleased mother and of an enthusiastic maiden aunt.

Amy reached Churchton first, and it soon transpired through the house in which she lived that she was engaged to Bertram Cope. Cope, returning two days later, with Lemoyne, found his new status an open book to the world--or to such a small corner of the world as cared to read.

Cope had written from Freeford, explaining to Randolph the broken dinner-engagement: at least he had said that immediate concerns of importance had driven the date from his mind, and that he was sorry. Randolph, only too willing to accept any fair excuse, good-naturedly made this one serve: the boy was not so negligent and ungrateful, after all. He got the rest of the story a few days later, in a message from Foster. What _was_ the boy, then? he asked himself. He recalled their talk as they had walked past the sand-hills on that October Sunday. Cope had disclaimed all inclination for matrimony. He had confessed a certain inability to safeguard himself. Was he a victim, after all? A victim to his own ineptitude? A victim to his own highmindedness? Well, whatever the alternative, a field for the work of the salvage-corps had opened.

At the big house on Ashburn Avenue a like feeling had come to prevail. Medora Phillips herself had passed from the indulgently satirical to the impatient, and almost to the indignant. Her niece thought the new relation clearly superfluous. She put away the portrait in oil, but she rather hoped to resume work on it, some time. Meanwhile, she was far from kind to Amy.

Cope soon made an obligatory appearance at the house. He was glad enough to have the presence and the support of Arthur Lemoyne. The call came on a rigorous evening at the beginning of the second week in January. The two young men had about brought their new quarters to shape and subjection. They had spent two or three evenings in shifting and rearranging things--trifling purchases in person and larger things sent by express. They had reached a good degree of snugness and comfort; but----

"We've got to go tonight!" said Cope firmly.

"Tonight?" repeated Lemoyne. "Unless I'm mistaken, we're in for a deuce of a time." He snuggled again into the big easy chair that had just arrived from Winnebago.

"We are!" returned Cope, with unhappy mien. "But it's got to be gone through with."

"I'm talking about the weather," rejoined Lemoyne plumply. He was versed in the reading of signs as they presented themselves a hundred and fifty miles to the north, and he thought he could accurately apply his experience to a locale somewhat beyond his earlier ken. The vast open welter of water to the east would but give the roaring north wind a greater impetus. "We're going to have tonight the storm of the season."

"Storm or no storm, I can't put it off any longer. I've got to go."

As they started out the wind was keen, and a few fine flakes, driven from the north, flew athwart their faces. When they reached Mrs. Phillips' house, Peter, wrapped in furs, was sitting in the limousine by the curb, and two or three people were seen in the open door of the vestibule.

"Well, the best of luck, _cher Professeur_," Cope heard the voice of Mrs. Phillips saying, in a quick expulsion of syllables. "This is going to be a bad night, I'm afraid; but I hope your audience will get to the hall to hear you, and that our Pierre will be able to get you back to us."

"Oh, Madame," returned the plump little man, "what a climate!" And he ran down the walk to the car.

Yes, Mrs. Phillips had another celebrity on her hands. It was an eminent French historian who was going across to the campus to deliver the second lecture of his course. "How lucky," she had said to Hortense, just after dinner, "that we went to hear him _last_ night!" Their visitor was handsomely accommodated--and suitably, too, she felt--in the Louis Quinze chamber, and he was expected back in it a little after ten.

"Why, Bertram Cope!" she exclaimed, as the two young men came up the walk while the great historian ran down; "come in, come in; don't let me stand here freezing!"

It turned out to be a young man's night. Mrs. Phillips had invited a few "types" to entertain and instruct her Frenchman. They had come to dinner, and they had stayed on afterward.

Among them was the autumn undergraduate whom Cope, at an earlier day, had disdainfully called "Phaon," a youth of twenty. "You know," said Medora Phillips to Randolph, a few days later, when reviewing the stay of her newest guest, "Those sophisticated, world-worn people so appreciate our fresh, innocent, ingenuous boys. M. Pelouse told me, on leaving, that Roddy quite met his ideal of the young American. So open-faced, so inexperienced, so out of the great world...."

"Good heavens!" said Randolph impatiently. "Do they constitute the world? You might think so,--going about giving us awards, and hanging medals on us, and certifying how well we speak French! Fudge! The world is changing. It would be better," he added, "if more of us--college students included--learned how to speak a decenter English. I went to their dramatic club the other evening. Such pronunciation! Such delivery! I almost longed for the films."

A second "young American" was present--George F. Pearson. Pearson lived with his parents in another big house a block down the street. Mrs. Phillips had summoned him as a type that was purely indigenous--the "young American business man." Pearson had just made a "kill," as he called it--a coup executed quite without the aid of his father, and he was too full of his success to keep still; he was more typical than ever. The Professor had looked at him in staring wonder. So had Amy Leffingwell--in the absence of another target for her large, intent eyes.

But Medora Phillips knew all about George and Roddy. The novelty was Lemoyne, and she must learn about him. She readily seized the points that composed his personal aspect, which she found good: his general darkness and richness made him a fine foil for Cope. She quickly credited him with a pretty complete battery of artistic aptitudes and apprehensions. She felt certain that he would appreciate her ballroom and picture-gallery, and would figure well within it. The company was young, the night was wild, and cheer was the word. She presently led the way upstairs. Foster, as soon as he heard the first voices in the hall and the first footfalls on the bare treads of the upper stairs, shut his door.

Lemoyne felt the big bare room--bare save for a piano and a fringe of chairs and settles, large and small--as a stage; and he surmised that he, the new-comer, was expected to exhibit himself on it. He became consciously the actor. He tried now the assertive note, and now the quiet note; somehow the quiet was the louder of the two. Pearson, who was in a conquering mood tonight, scented a rival in the general attention, and one not wholly unworthy. Pearson was the only one of the four in evening dress, and he felt that to be an advantage. He, at least, had been properly attired to meet the elegant visitor from abroad. As for poor Roddy, he had come in an ordinary sack: perhaps it was partly this which had prompted M. Pelouse (who was of course dressed for the platform) to find the boy such a paragon of simple innocence.

All costumes were alike to Lemoyne; he had appeared in dozens. If he lacked costume now, he made it up in manner. He had bestowed an immensity of manner on Amy Leffingwell, downstairs: his cue had been a high, delicate, remote gravity. "I know, I know," he seemed to say; "and I make no comment." Upstairs he kept close by Cope: he was proprietary; he was protective. If Cope settled down in a large chair, Lemoyne would drape himself over the arm of it; and his hand would fall, as like as not, on the back of the chair, or even on Cope's shoulder. And when he came to occupy the piano-stool, Cope, standing alongside, would lay a hand on his. Mrs. Phillips noticed these minor familiarities and remarked on them to Foster, who had lately wheeled his chair in. Foster, a few days later, passed the comment on to Randolph, with an astringent comment of his own.--At all events, Amy Leffingwell remained in the distance, and George Pearson shared the distance with her.

Foster had broken from his retirement on hearing the voices of Cope and Lemoyne combined in song. The song was "Larboard Watch," and he remembered how his half-brother had sung in it during courtship, with the young fellow who had acted, later, as his best man. Lemoyne, at the first word of invitation, had seated himself at the instrument--a lesser than the "grand" downstairs, but not unworthy; then, with but a measure or so of prelude, the two voices had begun to ring out in the old nautical ballad. Lemoyne felt the composition to be primitive, antiquated and of slight value; but he had received his cue, and both his throat and his hands wrought with an elaborate expressiveness. He sang and played, if not with sincerity, at least with effect. His voice was a high, ringing tenor; not too ringing for Cope's resonant baritone, but almost too sweet: a voice which might cloy (if used alone) within a few moments. Cope was a perfect second, and the two went at it with a complete unity of understanding and of sentiment. Together they viewed--in thirds--"the gath'ring clouds"; together--still in thirds--they roused themselves "at the welcome call" of "Larboard watch, ahoy!" Disregarding the mere words, they attained, at the finish, to something like feeling--or even like a touch of passion. Medora Phillips had never heard Cope sing like that before; had never seen so much animation in his singing face. By the fourth bar there had been tears in her eyes, and there was a catch in her breath when she exclaimed softly, "You dear boys!" It was too soon, of course, to make Lemoyne "dear"--the one boy was Cope. It was really his voice which she had heard through the soaring, insinuating tones of the other. Foster, sitting beside her, suddenly raised his shade and peered out questioningly, both at the singers and at his sister-in-law. He seemed surprised--and more.

Pearson was surprised too, but kept his applause within limits. However, he praised Lemoyne for his accompaniment. Then he begged Amy for an air on the violin; and while they were determining who should play her accompaniment, the wind raged more wildly round the gables and the thickening snow drove with a fiercer impetus against the windows.

Lemoyne (who was a perfectly good sight-reader) begged that he might not be condemned to spoil another's performance. This was the result of an understanding between Cope and himself that neither was to contribute further. Presently a simple piece was selected through which the unskilled Carolyn might be trusted to pick her way. Cope listened with a decorous attention which was designed to indicate the highest degree of sympathetic interest; but his attitude, so finely composed within, yet so ineffectively displayed without, was as nothing to the loud promptness of Pearson's praise. Amy glanced at Cope with questioning surprise; but she met Pearson's excesses of commendation with a gratified smile.

Shortly before ten o'clock there was a stir at the front door. Mrs. Phillips rose hastily. "It is M. Pelouse; let me go down and pet him."

Yes, it was M. Pelouse. "Oh, Madame!" he said, as before, but with an expressiveness doubly charged, "what a climate!" He was panting and was covered with fine snow. Behind him was Peter, looking very grave and dour.

"Shall I be wanted further?" asked Peter in a tense tone, and with no trace of his usual good-natured smile.

"What! Again?" cried Mrs. Phillips, while Helga, farther up the hall, was undoing the Professor; "three times on a night like this? No, indeed! Get back into the garage as fast as you can."

"Oh, Madame!" said the Professor, now out of his wrappings and in better control of his voice. "They were so faithful to our beautiful France! The _salle_ was almost full!"

"Well," said Mrs. Phillips to herself, "they got there all right, then. I hope most of them will get back home alive!"

"What a climate!" M. Pelouse was still saying, as he entered the ball-room. He had not been there before. He ran an appraising eye over the pictures and said little. But as soon as he learned that some of them were the work of the late M. Phillips he found words. He led the company through a tasteful jungle of verbosity, and left the ultimate impression that Monsieur had been a remarkable man, whether as artist or as collector.

Yet he did not forget to say once more, "What a climate!"

"Is it really bad outside?" asked Pearson. M. Pelouse shrugged his shoulders. It was _affreux_.

"It is indeed," corroborated Mrs. Phillips: she had spent her moment at the front door. "Nobody that I can find room for leaves my house tonight." This meant that Cope and Lemoyne were to occupy the chintz chamber.

M. Pelouse gradually regained himself. Cope interested him. Cope was, in type, the more "American" of the two new arrivals. He was also, as M. Pelouse had heard, the _pretendant_,--yes, the _fiance_. Well, he was calm and inexpressive enough: no close and eager attendance; cool, cool. "How interesting," said the observer to himself. "And Mademoiselle, quite across the room, and quite taken up"--happily, too, it seemed--"with another man: with the other man, perhaps?..."

At half past ten Pearson rose to leave; Cope and Lemoyne rose at the same time. "No," said Mrs. Phillips, stopping them both; "you mustn't think of trying to go. I can't ask Peter to take you, and you could never get across on foot in the world. I can find a place for you."

"And about poor Roddy?" asked Hortense.

"Roddy may stay with me," declared Pearson. "I can put him up. Come on, Aldridge," he said; "you're good for a hundred yard dash." And down they started.

"I don't want to stay," muttered Cope to Lemoyne, under cover of the others' departure. "Devil take it; it's the last thing in the world I want to do!"

"It's awkward," returned Lemoyne, "but we're in for it. After all, it isn't _her_ house, nor her family's. Besides, you've got me."

Mrs. Phillips summoned Helga and another maid, who were just on the point of going to bed, and directed their efforts toward the chintz chamber. "Ah, well," thought M. Pelouse, "the _fiance_, then, is going to remain over night in the house of his _fiancee_!" It was droll; yet there were extenuating circumstances. But--such a singular climate, such curious temperaments, such a general chill! And M. Pelouse was presently lost to view among the welcome trappings of Louis Quinze.

22

_COPE SHALL BE RESCUED_

Next morning Cope left the house before breakfast. He had had the forethought to plead an exceptionally early engagement, and thus he avoided meeting, after the strain of the evening before, any of the various units of the household. He and Lemoyne, draping their parti-colored pajamas over the foot of the bedstead, left the chintz chamber at seven and walked out into the new day. The air was cold and tingling; the ground was white as a sheet; the sky was a strident, implacable blue. The glitter and the glare assaulted their sleepy eyes. They turned up their collars, thrust their hands deep into their pockets, and took briskly the half mile which led to their own percolator and electric toaster.

Cope threw himself down on the bed and let Lemoyne get the breakfast. Well, he had called; he had done the just and expected thing; he had held his face through it all; but he was tired after a night of much thought and little sleep. Possibly he might not have to call again for a full week. If 'phone messages or letters came, he would take them as best he could.

Nor was Lemoyne very alert. He was less prompt than usual in gaining his early morning loquacity. His coffee was lacking in spirit, and much of his toast was burnt. But the two revived, in fair measure, after their taxing walk.

They had talked through much of the dead middle of the night. Foster, wakeful and restless, had become exasperated beyond all power of a return to sleep. Concerns of youth and love kept them murmuring, murmuring in the acute if distant ears of one whom youth had left and for whom love was impossible. Beyond his foolish, figured wall were two contrasted types of young vigor, and they babbled, babbled on, in the sensitized hearing of one from whom vigor was gone and for whom hope was set.

"What do you think of her?" Cope had asked. Then he had thrown his face into his pillow and left one ear for the reply.

"She is a clinger," returned Lemoyne. "She will cling until she is loosened by something or somebody. Then she will cling to the second somebody as hard as she did to the first. I'm not so sure that it's you as an individual especially."

Cope had now no self-love to consider, no self-esteem to guard. He did not raise his face from out the pillow to reply. But he found Lemoyne rather drastic. Arthur had shown himself much in earnest, of course; he had the right, doubtless, to be reproachful; and he was fertile in suggestions looking toward his friend's freedom. Yet his expedients were not always delicate or fair: Cope would have welcomed a lighter hand on his exacerbated spirit, a more disinterested, more impartial touch. He was glad when, one afternoon at five, a few days later, he met Randolph on the steps of the library. Randolph, by his estimate, was disinterested and impartial.

The weather still held cold: it was no day for spending time, conversationally, outside; and they stepped back for a little into a recess of the vestibule. Cope found an opening by bolstering up his previous written excuses. He was still very general.

"That's all right," replied Randolph, in friendly fashion. "Some time, soon, we must try again. And this time we must have your friend." His glance was kind, yet keen; nor was it brief.

Randolph had already the outlines of the situation as Foster understood them. He sometimes slipped in, on Sunday forenoon, to read the newspapers to Foster, instead of going to church. Hortense and Carolyn came up now and then: indeed, this reading was, theoretically, a part of Carolyn's duties, but she was coming less and less frequently, and often never got beyond the headlines. So that, every other Sunday at least, Randolph set aside prayer-book and hymnal for dramatic criticisms, editorials, sports and "society."

This time Foster was full of the events of Friday night. "As I make it out, he kept away from her the whole evening, and that new man helped him do it. Our friend down the street, Hortense says, showed every disposition to cut in, and the girl showed at least some disposition to let him. I don't wonder: when you come right down to it, he's twice the man the other is."

"Young Pearson?"

"Yes."

"Clever lad. Confident. But brash. Just what his father used to be."

"He praised her playing. Cope sat dumb. And next morning he hurried away before breakfast. You know what kind of a morning it was. Anything very pressing at the University on a Saturday morning at eight?"

"I hardly know."

"How about this sudden new friend?" Foster twitched in his chair. "Medora," he went on, "seems to have no special fancy for him. She even objects to his calling Cope 'Bert.' Of course he sings. And he seems to be self-possessed and clever. But 'self-possessed'--that doesn't express it. He was so awfully, so publicly, at home; at least that's as I gather it. Always hanging over the other man's chair; always finding a reason to put his hand on his shoulder...."

"Body-guard? No wonder Pearson came to the fore."

"I don't know. What I've heard makes me think of----"

And here, Foster, speaking with a keen and complicated acerbity, recalled how, during earlier years of travel, he had had opportunity to observe a young married couple at a Saratoga hotel. They had made their partiality too public, and an elderly lady not far away in the vast "parlor" had audibly complained that they brought the manners of the bed-chamber into the drawing-room.

"They talked half through the night, too," Foster added bitterly.

"Young men's problems," said Randolph. "Possibly they were considering Pearson."

"Possibly," repeated Foster; and neither followed further, for a moment, the pathway of surmise.

Presently Randolph rose and scuffled through the ruck of newspapers, with which no great progress had been made. "Is Medora at home?" he asked.

"I think she's off at church," said Foster discontentedly. "And Hortense went with her."

"I'll call her up later. If I can get her for Wednesday--and Pearson too...."

Foster, accustomed to piecing loose ends as well as he could, did not ask him to finish. Randolph picked up a crumpled sheet from the floor, reseated himself, and read out the account of yesterday's double performance at the opera.

When Randolph, then, met Cope in the vestibule of the library, on Monday, he felt that he had ground under his feet. Just how solid, just how extensive, he was not quite sure; but he could safely take a few steps experimentally. Cope was a picture of uncertainty and woe; his face was an open bid for sympathy and aid.

"You are unhappy," said Randolph; "and I think I know why." He meant to advance toward the problem as if it were a case of jealousy--a matter of Pearson's intrusion and of Amy's seemingly willing acceptance of it.

Cope soon caught Randolph's idea, and he stared. He did not at all resent Randolph's advances; misapprehension, in fact, might serve as fairly, in the end, as the clearest understanding.

Randolph placed his hand on Cope's shoulder. "You have only to assert yourself," he said. "The other man is an intruder; it would be easy to warn him off before he starts in to win her."

"George Pearson?" said Cope. "Win her? In heaven's name," he blurted out, "let him!"

It was a cry of distaste and despair, in which no rival was concerned. Randolph now had the situation in its real lines.

"Well, this is no place for a talk," he said. "If you should care to happen in on me some evening before long...."

"I have Wednesday," returned Cope, with eagerness.

"Not Wednesday. I have an engagement for that evening. But any evening a little later."

"Friday? The worst of my week's work is over by then."

"Friday will do." And they parted.

Randolph had secured for his Wednesday evening Medora Phillips and Hortense. Hortense was the young person to pair with Pearson, who had thrown over an evening at his club for the dinner with Randolph. The talk was to be--in sections and installments--of Amy Leffingwell, and of Cope in so far as he might enter. Medora would speak; Hortense would speak; Randolph himself should speak. To complete the party he had asked his relations from the far side of the big city. His sister would preside for him; and his brother-in-law might justify his expenditure of time and trouble by stopping off in advance for a brief confab, as trustee, at the administration building, with the president. A compatriot had been secured by Sing-Lo to help in dining-room and kitchen.

Randolph had planned a short dinner. His sister, facing the long return-drive, would doubtless be willing to leave by nine-thirty. Then, with two extraneous pieces removed from the board, the real matter in hand might be got under way.

Mrs. Phillips was most lively from the start. She praised the house, which she was seeing for the first time. She extolled Sing-Lo's department, and Sing-Lo, who delighted in entertainments, was one broad smile. She had a word of encouragement for his less smiling helper, whom she informally christened Sing-Hi; and she chatted endlessly with Mrs. Brackett--perhaps even helped tire her out. Yes, George Pearson was to be urged forward for the rescue of Bertram Cope.

Pearson spoke up loud and clear among the males. He was a business-man among business-men, and during the very few moments formally allowed for the cigars he made himself, as he felt, tell. And after the Bracketts left--at nine twenty-five--he was easily content to stay on for three-quarters of an hour longer.

At nine-forty Pearson was saying, amidst the cigarette-smoke of the den:

"Does she expect to teach the violin all her life?"

He was both ironical and impatient. Clearly a charming, delicate creature like Amy Leffingwell might better decorate the domestic scene of some gentleman who enjoyed position and prosperity.

"I hope not, indeed," said Hortense, in a deep contralto.

Pearson cast on Hortense a look which rewarded such discernment.

"Of course he has nothing, now," said Randolph, with deliberation. "And he may be nothing but a poor, underpaid professor all his life."

"No ring--yet," said Hortense, further. Her "yet" meant "not even yet." Her deep tone was plausibly indignant.

"I'm rather glad of that," remarked Mrs. Phillips, with an eye pretendedly fixed on the Mexican dolls. "I can't feel that they are altogether suited to each other."

"He doesn't care for her," pursued Hortense.

"Does she really care for him?" asked Pearson.

No answer. One pair of eyes sought the floor; another searched the ceiling; a third became altogether subordinate to questioning, high-held brows.

Pearson glanced from one face to another. The doubt as to her "caring" seemed universal. The doubt that she cared deeply, essentially, was one that he had brought away from the ball-room. And he went home, at ten twenty-three, pretty well determined that he would very soon try to change doubt to certainty.

"Thank you so much," said Mrs. Phillips to Randolph, as he went out with her and Hortense to put them in the car. "I'm sure we don't want him to be burdened and miserable; and I'm sure we all do want her to be happy. George is a lovely, capable chap,--and, really, he has quite a way."

23

_COPE REGAINS HIS FREEDOM_

On Friday evening Randolph, at home, was glancing now and then at the clock (as on a previous occasion), while waiting for Cope. At eight-fifteen the telephone rang; it was Cope, with excuses, as before. He was afraid he should be unable to come; some unexpected work... It was that autumn excursion all over again.

Randolph hung up the receiver, with some impatience. Still, never mind; if Cope would make no effort to save himself, others were making the effort for him. He had considerable confidence in George Pearson's state of mind, as well as in George's egoism and drive.

Foster heard of Cope's new delinquency, through Randolph's own reluctant admission. "He is an ingrate, after all," said Foster savagely, and gave his wheels an exceptionally violent jerk. And Randolph made little effort, this time, toward Cope's defense.

"You've done so much for him," Foster went on; "and you're willing to do so much more."

"I _could_ do a great deal, of course. There may be a good reason this time, too," said Randolph soberly.

"Humph!" returned Foster.

Cope had hung up the receiver to turn toward Lemoyne and to say: "I really ought to have gone."

"Wait until I can go with you," Lemoyne insisted, as he had been insisting just before. The still unseen man of Indian Rock was again the subject of his calculations.

"You've been asked," Cope submitted. "He has been very friendly to me, and I am sure he would be the same to you."

"I think that, personally, I can get along without him," the other muttered ungraciously to himself.

Aloud he said: "As I've told you, I've got the president of the dramatic club to see tonight, and it's high time that I was leaving." He looked with intention at the desk which had superseded that old table, with ink-stained cover, at which Cope had once worked. "You can use a little time to advantage over those themes. I'll be back within an hour."

Lemoyne had entered for Psychology, and was hoping that he now enjoyed the status necessary for participation in the college theatricals. But he was relying still more on a sudden defection or lapse which had left the dramatic club without a necessary actor at a critical time. "It's me, or postponement," he said; "and I think it's me." The new opportunity--or bare chance--loomed before him with immensity. Cope's affair might wait. He would even risk Cope's running over to Randolph's place alone.

Cope seated himself at his desk with loyalty, or at least with docility; and Lemoyne, putting on his hat and coat, started out for the fraternity house where the president of the club was in residence.

Five minutes after Lemoyne's departure Cope heard the telephone ringing downstairs, and presently a patient, middle-aged man knocked at the door and told him the call was for him.

Cope sighed apprehensively and went down. Of course it was Amy. Would he not come over for an hour? Everybody was away, and they could have a quiet talk together.

Cope, conscious of others in the house, replied cautiously. Lemoyne, he said, had gone out and left him with a deskful of themes: tiresome routine work, but necessary, and immensely absorptive of time. He was afraid that he could scarcely come this evening....

Amy's voice took on a new tone. Why, she seemed to be feeling, must Arthur Lemoyne be mentioned, and mentioned so early? Yet Bertram had put him--instinctively, unconsciously--at the head of the little verbal procession just begun.

Cope's response was dry and meagre; free speech was impossible over a lodging-house telephone set in the public hall. Amy, who knew little of Cope's immediate surroundings at the moment, went on in accents of protest and of grievance, and Cope went on replying in a half-hushed voice as non-committally as he was able. He dwelt more and more on the trying details of his work in words which conveyed no additional information to any fellow-dwellers who might overhear.

"You haven't been to see me for a week," came Amy's voice petulantly, indignantly.

"I'm very sorry, I'm sure," returned Cope in a carefully generalized tone of suavity. It was successful with the spinster in the side room above, but it was no tone to use with a protesting _fiancee_.

"Why do you neglect me so?" Amy's voice proceeded, with no shade of appeasement.

"There is no intention of that," replied Cope; "--so far as I know," he added, for ears about or above.

Again Amy's tone changed. It took on a tang of anger, and also a curious ring of finality--as if, suddenly, a last resolution had been reached. "Good night," she said abruptly, and the interview was over.

Cope forgot Randolph, and Lemoyne, and his themes. Lemoyne, returning within the hour, found him seated at his desk in self-absorbed depression, his work untouched.

"Well, they've taken me," he began; "and I shall have a fairly good part." Cope made no effort to respond to the other's glowing self-satisfaction, but sat with thoughtful, downcast eyes at his desk before the untouched themes. "What's the matter?" asked Lemoyne. "Has she been calling up again?"

Cope raised his head and gave him a look. Lemoyne saw that his very first guess had been correct.

"This is a gay life!" he broke out; "just the life I have come down here to lead. You're making yourself miserable, and you're making me miserable. It's got to end."

Cope gave him a second woeful glance.

"Write to her, breaking it off," prompted Lemoyne. "Draft a letter tonight."

His mind was full of _cliches_ from his reading and his "scripts." He had heard all the necessary things said: in fact, had said them himself--now in evening dress, now in hunting costume, now in the loose habiliments of Pierrot--time and time again. The dissatisfied _fiance_ need but say that he could not feel, after all, that they were as well suited to each other as they ought to be, that he could not bring himself to believe that his feeling for her was what love really should be, and that----

Thus, with a multiplicity of "that's," they accomplished a rough draft which might be restudied and used on the morrow. "There!" said Lemoyne to the weary Cope at eleven o'clock; "it ought to have been written a month ago."

Cope languidly slipped the oft-amended sheet under his pile of themes and in a spent voice suggested bed.

Over night and through the following forenoon the draft lay on his desk. When he returned to his room at three o'clock a note, which had been delivered by hand, awaited him. It was from Amy Leffingwell.

Cope read it, folded his arms on his desk, bowed his head on his arms, and, being alone, gave a half-sob. Then he lifted his head, with face illumined and soul refreshed. Amy had asked for an end to their engagement.

"What does she say?" asked Lemoyne, an hour later.

"She says what you say!" exclaimed Cope with shining eyes and a trace of half-hysteric bravado. "She does not feel that we are quite so well suited to each other as we ought to be, nor that her feeling toward me is what love really... Can she have been in dramatics too!"

"Your letter," returned Lemoyne, with dignity, "would have been understood."

"Quite so," Cope acknowledged, in a kind of exultant excitation. He caught the rough draft from his desk--it was all seared with new emendations--tore it up, and threw the fragments into the waste-basket. "Thank Heaven, I haven't had to send it!" In a moment, "What am I to write now?" he asked with irony.

"The next will be easier," returned Lemoyne, still with dignity.

"It will," replied Cope.

It was,--so much easier that it became but an elegant literary exercise. A few touches of nobility, a few more of elegiac regret, and it was ready at nine that night for the letter-box. Cope dropped it in with an iron clang and walked back to his quarters a free man.

A few days later Lemoyne, working for his new play, met Amy Leffingwell in the music-alcove of the University library. She had removed her gloves with their furry wristlets, and he saw that she had a ring on the third finger of her left hand. Its scintillations made a stirring address to his eye.

Cope heard about the ring that evening, and about Amy Leffingwell's engagement to George Pearson the next day.

He had no desire to dramatize the scene of Pearson's advance, assault and victory, nor to visualize the setting up of the monument by which that victory was commemorated. Lemoyne did it for him.

Pearson had probably indulged in some disparagement of Cope--a phase on which Lemoyne, as a faithful friend, did not dwell. But he clearly saw George taking Amy's hand, on which there was still no ring, and declaring that she should be wearing one before tomorrow night. He figured both George and Amy as rather glad that Cope had not given one, and as more and more inclining, with the passage of the days, to the comfortable feeling that there had never been any real engagement at all.

Lemoyne attempted to put some of his visualizings before Cope, but Cope cut him short. "Now I will settle down to work on my thesis," he said, "and get my degree at the June convocation."

"Good," said Lemoyne; "and now I can get my mind on the club." He went to the window and looked out on the night. The stars were a-glitter. "Let's take a turn round the block before we turn in."

They spent ten minutes in the clear winter air. As Cope, on their return, stooped to put his latch-key to use, Lemoyne impulsively threw an arm across his shoulder. "Everything is all right, now," he said, in a tone of high gratification; and Urania, through the whole width of her starry firmament, looked down kindly upon a happier household.

24

_COPE IN DANGER ANEW_

A similar satisfaction came to prevail in University circles, and in the lesser circle which Cope had formed outside. His own classroom, after a week, became a different place. There had been some disposition to take a facetious view of Cope's adventure. His class had felt him as cool and rather stiff, and comment would not be stayed. One bright girl thought he had spoiled a good suit of clothes for nothing. The boys, who knew how much clothes cost, and how much every suit counted, put their comment on a different basis. The more serious among them went no further, indeed, than to say that if a man had found himself making a mistake, the sooner he got out of it the better. For weeks this affair of Cope's had hung over the blackboard like a dim tapestry. Now it was gone; and when he tabulated in chalk the Elizabethan dramatists or the Victorian novelists there was nothing to prevent his students from seeing them.

Medora Phillips became sympathetic and tender. She let him understand that she thought he had been unfairly treated. This did not prevent her from being much kinder to Amy Leffingwell. Amy, earlier, had been so affected by the general change of tone that, more than once, she had felt prompted to take herself and her belongings out of the house. But she still lingered on, as she was likely to do, during a short engagement; and Mrs. Phillips was now amiability itself to George and Amy both.

Her method of soothing Cope was to take him to the theatre and the opera in town: he could scarcely come to the house. It was now late in January and the opera season was near its end. People were tiring of their boxes, or had started South: it had become almost a work of merit to fill a friend's box for her. During the last week of the season, Mrs. Phillips was put in position to do this. She invited Cope, and took along Hortense, and found in the city itself a married pair who could get to the place and home again without her help. Lemoyne would have made six, and the third man; but he was not bidden. Why pack the box? A better effect was made by presenting, negligently, one empty seat. Lemoyne dressed Cope, however. He had brought to Churchton the outgrown evening clothes; and Cope, in his exuberance, bought a new pair of light shoes and white gloves. He looked well as he sat on the back seat of the limousine with Medora Phillips, during the long drive in; and he looked well--strikingly, handsomely well--in the box itself. Indeed, thought Medora, he made other young men in nearby boxes--young men of "means" and "position"--look almost plebian. "He is charming," she said to herself, over and over again.

What about him "took" her? Was it his slenderness, his grace? Was it his youthfulness, intact to this moment and promising an extension of agreeable possibilities into an entertaining future? Or was it more largely his fundamental coolness of tone? Again he was an icicle on the temple--this time the temple of song. "He is glittering." said Medora, intent on his blazing blue eyes, his beautiful teeth ever ready for a public smile, and the luminous backward sweep of his hair; "and he is not soft." She thought suddenly of Arthur Lemoyne; he, by comparison, seemed like a dark, yielding plum-pudding.

On the way into town Medora had had Hortense sit in front with Peter. This arrangement had enabled her to lay her hand more than once on Cope's, and to tell him again that he had been rather badly treated, and that Amy, when you came to it, was a poor slight child who scarcely knew her own mind. "I hope she has not made a mistake, after all," breathed Medora.

All this soothed Cope. The easy motion of the luxurious car half-hypnotized him; a scene of unaccustomed splendor and brilliancy lay just ahead... What wonder that Medora found him scenically gratifying in her box (the dear creature's titillation made it seem "hers" indeed), and gave his name with great gusto to the young woman of the notebook and pencil? And the box was not at the back, but well along to one side, where people could better see him. Its number, too, was lower; so that, next morning, he was well up in the list, instead of at the extreme bottom, where two or three of the young men of means and position found themselves. Some of the girls in his class read his name, and had no more to say about wet clothes.

Hortense, on the front seat of the car, had had the good sense to say little and the acumen to listen much. She knew that Cope must "call" soon, and she knew it would be on some evening when he had been advised that Amy was not at home. There came, before long, an evening when Amy and George Pearson went into town for a musical comedy, and Cope walked across once more to the familiar house.